Today in History

Today is Saturday, April 5, the 95th day of 2014. There are 270 days left in the year.

Today’s highlight:

On April 5, 1614, Pocahontas, Indian Chief Powhatan’s daughter, married Englishman John Rolfe in the Virginia Colony. (A convert to Christianity, Pocahontas had adopted the name “Rebecca” when she was baptized.)

On this date:

In 1614, England’s King James I convened the second Parliament of his rule; the “Addled Parliament,” as it came to be known, lasted only two months.

In 1621, the Mayflower sailed from Plymouth Colony in present-day Massachusetts on a monthlong return trip to England.

In 1764, Britain’s Parliament passed The American Revenue Act of 1764, also known as The Sugar Act.

In 1864, Ben Field and George M. Pullman received a U.S. patent for an “improvement in (rail) sleeping-cars” that consisted of a folding upper berth.

In 1895, Oscar Wilde lost his criminal libel case against the Marquess of Queensberry, who’d accused the writer of homosexual practices.

In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order creating the Civilian Conservation Corps and an anti-hoarding order that effectively prohibited private ownership of gold.

In 1951, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death following their conviction in New York on charges of conspiring to commit espionage for the Soviet Union.

In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Federal Communications Commission v. American Broadcasting Co., Inc., unanimously ruled that TV quiz shows did not violate lottery laws.

In 1964, Army General Douglas MacArthur died in Washington at age 84.

In 1974, Stephen King’s first published novel, “Carrie,” was released by Doubleday.

In 1986, two American servicemen and a Turkish woman were killed in the bombing of a West Berlin discotheque, an incident which prompted a U.S. air raid on Libya more than a week later.

In 2010, an explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine near Charleston, W.Va., killed 29 workers.